News Voter Registrations Possibly Trashed

[Tsu]

From KLAS-TV in Las Vegas:

...focus of the story is a private registration company called Voters Outreach of America, AKA America Votes.

The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.

Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.

...

The landlord says Voters Outreach was evicted for non-payment of rent. Another source said the company has now moved on to Oregon where it is once again registering voters. It's unknown how many registrations may have been tossed out, but another ex-employee told Eyewitness News she had the same suspicions when she worked there.

http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2421595&nav=168XRvNe

 

[check]

On voter registration forms, does one have to specify which political party they are affiliated with?

 

[russ_watters]

On voter registration forms, does one have to specify which political party they are affiliated with?

Well, you don't have to but if you don't, you can vote in primaries. Not that that means much - my parents switched to Democrat for a while so they could vote against Clinton in a primary.

Targeted votor registration is a common tactic of both sides though. Yeah, its wrong when the Republicans do it: its also wrong when the Democrats do it.

 

[chroot]

check,

One does not have to, but there are good reasons for doing so. It is encouraged, actually.

The instructions for the California voter's registration says:

California law allows voters who "decline to state" an affiliation with a qualified political party or who affiliate with an nonqualified political party to vote in the primary election of any qualified political party that files a notice a notice with the Secretary of State allowing them to do so. You can call 1-800-345-VOTE or visit www.ss.ca.gov[/URL] to learn which political parties are allowing nonaffiliated voters to participate in their primary election.[/quote]

In other words, if you don't declare a party, it is possible that you will not be able to participate in any party's primary.

- Warren

 

[chroot]

It sounds like a bunch of people really need to go to jail for this. I will be saddened if the US does not punish this sort of activity extremely harshly.

Does anyone know what the penalty is for tampering with an election?

- Warren

 

[check]

Ah, I see. Thanks all!

russ, LoL!
Hmm, what if all the Democrats and Republicans switched which parties they're affiliated with just so they could pick really crappy candidates for the others in the primaries.

 

[Moonbear]

That's really horrid! Targeting registration is one thing, where you just seek out potential members of one party or the other to get them signed up...I'm not fond of the idea, but it's not illegal. But, what those Votes Outreach people did I hope is considered illegal, since they accepted the registrations and defrauded people of their right to vote by making them think they had registered and then not submitting the forms!

Russ_Waters...what your parents did of switching parties to vote AGAINST a candidate is the reason primaries are closed to party members. The reasoning is you want the BEST candidate each party has to offer, but there are people who would purposely vote for the weakest candidate of the opposing party to reduce the competition for their own party's candidate. If enough people do this, you wind up with the two weakest candidates running rather than the two strongest. I don't know if that's what your parents did, your mentioning that just reminded me of the reason for closed primaries...your parents may have had more honorable intentions, thinking there was a better candidate than Clinton in the democratic race, so wanted to give that one a shot. And since Clinton ultimately got the democratic vote, their motives don't really matter. (I'm trying to make it very clear this isn't personal.)

I've never declared a party myself, which does frustrate me that I can't vote in the primaries. I am still allowed to vote on any referendum type issues that are included during those elections, but have to vote on an issues only ballot. I'm the sort of person who wishes I could vote in both primaries to vote for the best candidate of each party, but realize there are others who would abuse such a system (sadly, I've seen them on other boards, rabidly bashing the opposing party rather than considering whether there are any good ideas worth adopting even if the overall policies are not desireable to them...both Republicans and Democrats do this).

 

[plover]

Iceberg?

The links at the site that Tsunami linked to don't seem to stay constant.

As of this posting:
Link to October 12 story - the original story Tsu quoted.
Link to October 13 story - this continuation is where Tsu's link currently goes.

I wouldn't be surprised if these links shifted again by the time most people read this if there is a further continuation for October 14.

Quotes from the October 13 story:

The FBI confirms that it is gathering information about the case but stopped short of calling it an investigation...

[...]

"Most disturbing is that Voter Outreach of America is being paid by the National Republican Party and we ask how can people have faith in government if a national party is involved in trickery in depriving people the right to vote," said Clark County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates.

The Republican National Committee acknowledges that it hired Voters Outreach of America to register voters, but in a statement said it had zero tolerance for any kind of fraud.

Local party officials said there is no way the GOP would instruct the company to trash democratic registrations. However, similar problems have been alleged elsewhere. In Washoe County, the registrar says he too has turned over information to the FBI about Republican backed registration efforts.

In Oregon, the same company that was operating here has been criticized for its tactics in signing up voters. There, it used the name America Votes, which is actually the name of a Democratic organization.

Employees in Las Vegas say they too were told that the name of the company was America Votes. "They confused us with the name. They told us one thing and told the temp force something else. They told us America Votes," Russell said.

There is an error here—the real http://www.americavotes.org/index.cfm is an explicitly non-partisan organization (though the coalition that organized it is made up of left-leaning groups).

Voter's Outreach of America has been connected to Nathan Sproul, head of Phoenix AZ political consulting firm Sproul and Associates. Sproul is also a former Arizona state Republican Party executive director, and former head of the Arizona Christian Coalition. Sproul and Associates, which has received around $500k from the Republican National Committee for voting drives, is responsible for apparently dodgy registration drives in several states (at least Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and an earlier effort in Oregon). While there are no allegations of registration shredding in these other cases, there are numerous reports by librarians that Sproul and Associates presented themselves as "America Votes" when requesting the use of library grounds for voter registration, and various complaints by their temp employees.

Here's http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2004/0921/local/stories/02local.htm .

In September, the Jackson County Library Services Central Library received a letter from Sproul & Associates, Inc. which began:

"Our firm has been contracted to help coordinate a national non-partisan voter registration drive, America Votes! in several states across the nation."

[...]

The toll-free number which librarians were given connects to an answering machine stating that if the caller is interested in canvassing neighborhoods in support of the GOP...

[emphasis added]

 

[russ_watters]

Ah, I see. Thanks all!

russ, LoL!
Hmm, what if all the Democrats and Republicans switched which parties they're affiliated with just so they could pick really crappy candidates for the others in the primaries.

Actually, IIRC, there was a really good candidate running against Clinton (sorta like the McCain vs Bush thing) and they actually would have voted for the guy for president had he gotten that far. Its not quite as sinister as I made it sound (its funnier that way).

Moonbear, you're right with one important caveat: parties don't necessarily pick the strongest candidate, they pick the one that is strong but represents their interests like a sock-puppet. That's the reason McCain isn't president today: the party topedoed his campaign because even though he would have cleaned-up in the general election, he didn't toe the party line.

plover - good to know: targeting specific groups for registration is perfectly legal (if a little unseemly), but misrepresenting who you work for is fraud.

 

[plover]

Updates from the same news site. (Their links seem to be stabilized.)
Voter Fraud Allegations Headed to Court (Oct. 14)
Judge Denies Re-opening Voter Registration (Oct. 15)

From the October 15 story:

Judge Adair had told the two parties in the case -- the Democratic Party and the elections dept., to go away and hammer out an agreement that would satisfy both, something along the lines of a one day, restricted re-opening of voter registration that would be available to persons who felt they had been scammed by private registration companies.

She told them to cut a deal and to come back in the afternoon. When they came back, there was no discussion of the deal. Instead, the judge ruled from the bench, saying there wasn't a lot of proof.

She said of the five torn up registrations, only two were legitimate and such a small number did not warrant re-opening voter registration. She said she needed more concrete evidence and added, "This will create additional fraud and manipulation."

During the morning hearing, Judge Adair had accepted the premise that egregious acts had been committed by someone in the destruction of registration forms. By later, she said the allegations were unsubstantiated, even though she chose not to hear testimony or to ask questions about other documentation that was offered to the court.

The judge flip-flopped!
When she got back to her chambers, there were pictures on her desk of her at Burning Man kissing a guy in a cactus outfit! Then the phone rang and Karl Rove's voice said, "If you ever want to see your goldfish Nolo again, you'll drop this case!" This was followed without pause by a dial-tone, as if the caller had been overriding the regular phone line!

...

... well, someone had to start a conspiracy theory...